Dare to Believe
by shepsgirl72
Summary: It began with the hope of an alliance against the Wraith, but it turned into Sheppard's worst nightmare.


Fingers gently stroked his cheek, but he pulled away. He didn't want them to touch him. He'd told them that time and again. Why wouldn't they listen?

'Do you feel any better, Colonel Sheppard?' the man asked, his voice gentle and reassuring, belying the duplicity Sheppard saw in his eyes when he looked at him.

'Jus' leave me alone.' His voice wasn't right, he noticed. He sounded almost intoxicated. Was that what they'd done? Had they drugged him and brought him here to this lifeless copy of his home?

'I'm sorry for your loss, Colonel, but you will soon learn to treat this place as your home. You belong here more than any of us do. You will be well taken care of.'

That much was true, but he wouldn't believe anything else this man told him. They weren't gone – not his friends. He could still hear their voices, and see their faces when he closed his eyes. They couldn't be gone...

'I don't want to be here,' he told the man again. How many times had he been through this with him? He wasn't to touch him, and he wanted to leave. Was it really so hard for him to understand?

Sheppard licked his dry lips and the man gently lifted his head, tipping water to his lips. At least he hoped it was water. He didn't know what to think anymore, his brain was so addled.

The man caught hold of his hand, stroking his fingers between his. 'The doctor will be here soon to assess your condition. He would have come sooner, but Gainar's baby has decided to make its way into our world a little earlier than expected!'

He smiled at him, but Sheppard turned away, snatching his hand back. This man spoke kind words and was gentle, but something inside him, an instinct he'd learned never to ignore told him he was dangerous – told him not to trust the man.

'Please, Colonel Sheppard – John – do not shut me out this way. I know you must be devastated by what happened to your colleagues, but you do not have to feel so alone. You are welcome to stay with us now. We would feel privileged if you considered us your friends.'

A flash of memory, the sight of a Wraith slamming its feeding hand into Elizabeth's chest, surged forward, bringing with it a wave of nausea that he struggled to control. No, that hadn't happened, he refused to believe that had happened to Elizabeth. These people weren't his friends; his friends were on Atlantis, and he needed to get back to them.

'I have to go back to my home–'

'Your home was destroyed.' The man's tone changed just a fraction as he spoke those words. Sheppard got the feeling he was tiring of trying to persuade him of that fact. How often had they had this conversation? It felt like it had happened time and time again, echoes of this man's words repeating over in his tired mind. But he still wasn't ready to believe it.

'How did I get here?'

The man, the name Alferon seemed to surface now when Sheppard looked at him, frowned and reached out to stroke Sheppard's hair away from his face. The colonel, ducked away from his touch again. He swore to himself if this guy didn't stop touching him he would break both his arms – except he couldn't because he was strapped to the damned bed. As he looked down at himself he realised he wasn't wearing his uniform anymore. It was gone and had been replaced by clothing that resembled what Alferon himself was wearing.

'Why am I being held here?' he asked, not looking at the man.

'The restraints are for your own good,' Alferon explained. 'When we brought you here, you had several seizures, probably because of the blow you suffered. We strapped you down to stop you hurting yourself. The doctor will be here to check your injuries soon.'

A vague recollection of hands holding him down as he struggled broke through to the forefront of his memory, but it didn't feel like he'd been convulsing. He'd been fighting – fighting against them.

'How did I get here?' he demanded, this time more forcefully.

Alferon sighed, standing up and walking away to look out of one of the multi-panelled windows that were so reminiscent of Atlantis. 'We have been through this several times, John. It seems your brain is having difficulty retaining information. Perhaps we should –'

'HOW DID I GET HERE?' Sheppard shouted, his patience departing with a sudden rush of adrenalin.

A flash of anger crossed Alferon's face as he turned toward him, but he swiftly masked it. 'The Wraith attacked Atlantis. They killed everyone there. We picked you up from the ocean surrounding the destroyed city. You must have jumped to save your life.'

Sheppard knew that wasn't true. He would never have jumped he would have defended the city to his last breath. Alferon obviously saw something in his expression that told him Sheppard found his words insulting. 'Of course, you might have fallen from Atlantis during the battle. There was a great deal of damage to the city, so you could easily have fallen through a broken rail...'

His voice petered out as if he realised they were falling on deaf ears. A flash of memory jolted through Sheppard's mind – Teyla falling to the ground, hit by a Wraith stunner. Why hadn't he helped her? Surely he would have tried to get to her, not stand by and watch as a Wraith descended upon her.

'Where are my clothes? I want my uniform back.'

'We had to remove it because you were so cold, John. Aren't you comfortable in the clothes we gave you?'

'So, where are my dog tags?'

'I...I'm not sure. Perhaps they fell off when you hit the water.'

'I need to go back to Atlantis,' he said simply. 'I have to see what they've done.'

Though he looked troubled by the thought, after a pause Alferon nodded his understanding. 'Very well. We will take you back there once you are stronger, but for now you must rest.'

The door to the chamber opened, and another more austere looking gentleman entered. 'How is my patient?' he asked, flashing Sheppard a sharp smile that brought him no comfort.

'He is still confused...finding it hard to accept his colleagues are gone.'

'That's understandable. Denial is as much a part of bereavement as acceptance.'

_Not just colleagues – friends,_ Sheppard thought, turning his face away from them as his emotions threatened to spill over. He wouldn't believe they were gone until he'd seen it all with his own eyes because something about these people and their story didn't ring true. Did they honestly want him to believe they just happened to be passing Atlantis in the aftermath of this attack? It seemed too convenient that they'd found him floating in the ocean in time to save him from drowning or hypothermia.

'He wishes to return to Atlantis,' Sheppard heard Alferon tell the doctor.

'Does he? Well, I suppose that can be arranged.'

Something was off here. Sheppard felt that as clearly as he could feel the restraints holding him down on that bed. But for now he would play along. If he did, they might release him from his bonds, and then he could attempt escape.

When he turned to face the two men in the room with him, he found the doctor peering at him oddly. A shiver ran through him as he wondered if this man had somehow read his thoughts.

The doctor crossed to his bedside, lifting the dressing on his temple and pressing some kind of tool to his injury. A sharp pain stabbed its way deep into Sheppard's brain as he touched it, causing him to flinch away.

'I think we'll need to do some more work on this,' he called back to Alferon.

'Yes, I think so,' the man agreed.

'Is it bad?' Sheppard asked.

The doctor's eyes snapped to his, hard and cold. 'We need to bring it under control,' he said, his words so ambiguous that Sheppard's sense of unease only worsened. They were hiding something from him. That memory of being held down returned, but wouldn't come to him clearly. The faces were blurred, voices fractured and disjointed.

Alferon joined the doctor and reached out, squeezing Sheppard's arm. 'We are worried about you, John. We want to make you comfortable here. This is your home now.'

The doctor shot Alferon a look that immediately silenced him. Their responses were weird – not saying much, but hinting that his problems weren't necessarily medical. They 'needed to bring it under control', they 'wanted to make him more comfortable there' – these weren't medical terms. They sounded manipulative...even conspiratorial.

'Why are you really keeping me here? Get these straps off me,' he demanded, straining against them.

'He's becoming distressed. We need to sedate him again,' the doctor said, matter-of-fact, reaching into the bag he had brought with him and pulling out a syringe that he swiftly loaded with medication.

Sheppard shouted for him to stay away, but no one cared. Alferon held him arm steady, and the prick of the needle soon sent him tumbling into darkness.

*****

'You can see they have destroyed everything of value,' Alferon said softly, standing beside Sheppard as the active Stargate shed its eerie blue light on the scene of devastation.

Sheppard turned his head slowly to look at him, his brain feeling oddly spongy and slow to catch up with the movement. Atlantis lay sleeping in front of him, bodies of servicemen strewn about like discarded candy wrappers. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing, but it was truly senseless. So much death and destruction – how could anyone come to terms with this?

He walked further into the main embarkation area, turning full circle to take it all in. Dried husks of bodies lay where they had fallen, only their dog tags defining them as the individuals they had once been. All life, all essence of what made these people the unique souls they had once been, was gone. Ahead of him, on the stairs, and hanging over balconies were the corpses of more of Atlantis' staff, each one as drained as the next. No one had been spared.

'Have you seen enough?'

That was the doctor's voice; he recognised its cool detachment without needing to see him. Sheppard swayed his way over to the body lying closest to him and knelt beside it. Though it turned his stomach to see the ravages of a Wraith feeding up close, he felt the sudden need to know who this was. He freed up the dog tags from the uniform and read the name: Caroline Richardson. It took a moment to call her face to mind. She hadn't been there long, having arrived on the Daedelus only three months ago, but he remembered she was young and full of life, and excited to be part of something so important.

'This is all wrong. What happened to our shields?' he breathed. The question was more to himself than anyone else, but Alferon jumped in to answer.

'We believe the Wraith found some way to evade Atlantis' sensors. The attack came as a complete surprise...to all of you. The city was overwhelmed before you had chance to defend yourselves.'

Sheppard couldn't help wondering why Alferon felt the need to explain away any doubts he voiced. He seemed to have an answer for everything. Another memory forced itself to the surface; Rodney yelling that there were Wraith appearing in all key areas of the city. When he tried to focus on the image to find out what happened next, it slipped away out of reach. It seemed all his memories of the attack did that. He had nothing he could grasp onto to help him remember.

'I have to find my friends,' he breathed, brushing past both the doctor and Alferon as he mounted the steps that led to Elizabeth's office.

The door wouldn't open for him, but that wasn't a complete surprise since the city seemed as devoid of life as its inhabitants. There was a small gap, just big enough to get his fingers into, so he did and tugged hard until the door gave way with a grinding sound that made his head throb. Beyond it, Elizabeth's office lay in disarray, all the things she had gathered to herself to make the almost clinically minimal design of Atlantis more homely lay broken on the floor. In the further corner, he spotted the Athosian pot he'd bought her for her first birthday on Atlantis, the birthday she'd thought she'd managed to keep from everyone, but he'd memorised when reading through personnel files. As military commander he had access to these things, and his skill with numbers meant he remembered all the birthdays of his team without them having to remind him. Now...well, he would still remember them, but there would be no one to share them with.

He picked up the larger fragments of the vessel, piecing it together as if fixing it would somehow put his shattered world back together. Realising the act was futile, he tossed them aside again, stopping with a gasp as he turned to head back out the door. A body lay on the floor, shielded from view by the desk when he'd entered. The length of the hair and the style of the red top told him it was Elizabeth. He couldn't move, frozen to the spot with shock. She had been lying there the whole time and he hadn't known.

He couldn't move to her, wouldn't in fact. If he didn't touch her – didn't try to identify her – he could convince himself this wasn't real.

'John.' Alferon's voice drew his attention away from her. The man stood in the doorway, watching him. Why couldn't the man just give him the space he needed?

Sheppard turned his face away, hiding the tears now moistening his eyes; he'd never cried in front of his friends, so he wasn't going to in front of these strangers.

'John, we really should go now. There's nothing more you can do for these people.'

_These people. _The man spoke of them as if they were insignificant nobodies, but _these people _had become more like family than his own flesh and blood. He knew he couldn't stay here amongst the dusty, lifeless bodies, but he felt compelled to do something.

'I need to go to the Control Room.'

Again, he pushed the smaller man aside to make his way to the heart of Atlantis, but both he and the doctor followed close behind. The Control Room had fared no better than the rest of the base, shot to pieces and lying in tatters. He waved his hand over several of the panels, but none of them showed even a glimmer of life. The Wraith had destroyed everything. But he needed to get these people home.

He looked down at the twisted, silently screaming bodies on the floor, realising that one of them was most likely to be Rodney; this was where he would be in a time of crisis. Refusing to look at them too closely, he tried to focus on what had to be done.

'I need to contact my home world – let them know what happened here.'

Alferon glanced at the doctor, then back at Sheppard. 'Your home world. We thought Atlantis was your home.'

'Well, it isn't, and I need to contact them so they can take these people home for proper burial.'

'But the control room is destroyed; you cannot contact anyone,' Alferon pointed out. 'Accept the hand fate has dealt you and return to Karthona with us.'

'Yes! You have a city like this one. All I have to do is initialised systems and I should be able to make contact –'

'No,' the doctor said sharply. 'You will not contact anyone else.'

'I have to let my superiors know what happened. I have to go back to them.'

The doctor grabbed his arm and gave him one firm shake. 'Your home is with us now. We cannot make that any clearer.'

'Harlen, do not be angry with him. He is understandably distressed...'

'We have dallied long enough, Alferon,' the doctor snapped. 'He has deliberately withheld this information from us. We cannot persuade him that staying is the right thing when new details of his life keep surfacing. It's time to instigate full control before he finds his way out of here.'

Cold slithered the length of Sheppard's spine. He couldn't pretend to know exactly what was going on, but he knew what he was seeing here wasn't right. Atlantis shimmered around him, rippling like the waves of the ocean surrounding it. Then the building re-established itself, seeming solid and frighteningly real again with all its death and devastation. But it wasn't real; he'd seen it falter. And if it wasn't real, then perhaps his friends weren't gone.

He touched the dressing on his temple, feeling a lump beneath it.

'Stop him!' Harlen ordered, and both he and Alferon leapt forward to restrain him as he tore free the dressing and revealed the implant imbedded in his skin beneath it.

'Do not attempt to remove it. That would kill you,' Alferon told him, his face pale with panic.

'I told you we should have chosen the scientist to manipulate,' Harlen growled. 'For all his intelligence, he was far more gullible than this one.'

'Where is he? Where's McKay. Where are the others?' Sheppard demanded.

Around him, Atlantis undulated, coming in and out of sharp focus. It was some kind of projection, he could see the other city, their city, through the fissures forming in the image they'd created to fool him.

Sheppard fought, but the harder he struggled, the more his head pounded. He pushed the sight of the broken Atlantis from his mind, forcing himself to see his real surroundings. 'Where are the rest of my team? What have you done with them?'

'They are fine, John. They left after you were killed in a terrible accident. They took your body back to Atlantis.'

Sheppard's head spun as he tried to make sense of that. 'But I'm here; I'm alive.'

'Your friends don't know that. They believe you died in an explosion the night you arrived here. It was a terrible conflagration. It took us several days to identify which body was yours and release it to them. Right now, they are in possession of the body of a stranger dressed in your charred uniform and wearing your dog tags.'

John tugged his arms free and landed a blow on Harlen. Alferon didn't need as much persuasion to release his grip on him, immediately snatching his hands back as if burned.

'You never intended to join us in the fight against the Wraith, did you? You just wanted me to stay so I could get the Ancestral city up and running for you,' Sheppard spat at him.

'Not just that, John. This is your new home now. We need your skills and knowledge to make the city truly work for us. We will give you military command over all of our forces. Imagine...thousands of men at your disposal. We will take good care of you until you learn to accept your place here. It will only take a few more sessions, a few more adjustments to the implant, and you will learn to appreciate your new life.'

Sheppard set his jaw. 'Not going to happen,' he grunted, activating the door he had backed up to and bolting out into the corridor beyond.

He was remembering more about these people now. They needed him to activate the dormant Ancient city resting near to their home settlement. They were advanced, but they wanted more. They wanted access to the Ancient database the city housed and all the scientific equipment the Ancients had abandoned there. But they couldn't use them without a descendant of the Ancestors, and when he'd passed their test, which he now realised activating the datapad containing the terms of their allegiance had been, they'd decided to make him stay with them.

Around another corner, he found four of the Karthonians blocking his path. Harlen had obviously let them know he was on the loose and they meant to recapture him. When he turned back he found the doctor and Alferon closing in on his position.

'We need you to stay calm, John. All this stress will impede our experiments,' Harlen told him.

'Experiments. I am not a God-damned guinea pig,' Sheppard hissed, reaching up to pull at the implant again. His action met with a sharp stab that radiated from his temple into the depths of his brain.

'You have to stop him before he hurts himself. If we're to bring this city to life, it's crucial we keep him alive,' Alferon said, wringing his hands.

'Restrain him,' Harlen ordered the approaching men.

Sheppard tried to avoid their grasping hands, but though he shouldered his way past the first two assailants, the others were able to grab hold of him and bring him to the floor. He lashed out, but soon found himself punched into submission and restrained by the four men and Alferon, as the doctor moved in to make his 'adjustments'. Sheppard turned his head away, but firm hands twisted it back so Harlen could easily reach the implant and do his work.

Sheppard screamed out and thrashed, trying to delay the inevitable, but he knew they had all the control. His consciousness grew hazy, a mixture of the reality he faced and the nightmares they'd convinced him were true merging and swirling as his world began to slip away, and a brilliant white light engulfed him...

*****

'Nononono! Don't touch that thing, Ronon. We have no idea what it's doing?'

Sheppard recognised that voice, but knew it wasn't. McKay was dead. He'd seen him die on Atlantis.

He fell from the infirmary bed where he'd suddenly found himself, pushing back from all the figures gathered around him until his back collided with the wall.

'Stay back. You're not real,' he gasped, blinking away the mist from his vision. His head pounded, each throb feeding image after image to him. Pictures of death, destruction and the utter mayhem wreaked by the Wraith pulsed though his mind, reminding him that his friends were gone and he was alone in the Pegasus Galaxy.

'It's all right, John. You're safe now. You're on the Daedalus.'

His eyes sought out the source of that voice. Elizabeth. The image of her corpse tried to surface, but he didn't want to see that again. He wanted what he saw now, the vibrant, intelligent woman he loved to butt heads with until one of them won out. He didn't care if it was a delusion. All his friends were there; he was happy to let this hallucination overtake him if it meant he wasn't alone.

'Why don't yeh hop up onto the bed now and let me take a look at you?'

That was Carson. Sheppard's eyes darted around until they located him, an image of the doctor's desiccated body reminding him that this gentle man was no longer alive. He supposed if this was all some kind of breakdown, they couldn't do him any harm, so he climbed back on the bed.

Carson carefully approached his bedside, his brow furrowed with concern. 'It's good to see you, Colonel. It's just a pity we couldn't get you away from those people any sooner.'

The doctor flashed a look in Rodney's direction, who was immediately on the defensive. 'Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a way around their scrambling systems? The things change frequency every fifteen minutes or so; I had to anticipate any possible variations to have any chance of locating him.'

'You did good, Rodney,' Elizabeth reassured him.

'Now, let's see exactly what this thing is they've attached to your temple.' Carson ran his portable scanner head over the device, reading the data that appeared on his datapad. 'Well, the damn thing has some kind of electrodes extending into the areas of his brain affecting memory. We need to find some way of retracting them before it can be safely removed.'

'Give that to me,' Rodney snapped, almost shouldering the medic aside as he took the pad from him and examined the information. 'Hmmm. Clever design, I'll give them that. Looks like there's some kind of two-way flow of information, so they can extract memories, whilst feeding in new ones. It's fascinating, really.'

'Is it possible they're still receiving information from it?' Caldwell asked, pushing his way to the front of the crowd gathered at Sheppard's bedside. Sheppard focused on him, as he was the one person there who brought no associated horrific memories along with him.

'Err, yes. I suppose it's possible...we need to get it of him,' Rodney gasped.

'Well, thank yeh for stating the obvious, Rodney,' Carson chided.

'Is there any safe way of doing that?' Elizabeth asked.

'Well,' Rodney looked to Carson, the two of them exchanging a worried glance. 'This could involve some pretty delicate brain surgery.'

'I'm not comfortable with doing that,' Carson interrupted. 'Those things are deeply rooted into his temporal lobe. Any attempts to remove them by surgery could leave him with permanent brain damage.'

Sheppard was just thankful none of this was real. He didn't want anyone rooting around inside his head, even if that someone was as skilled as Carson. Then again, he had felt an implant on his temple before blacking out, so maybe there was something to this. Had the Karthonians implanted him and made him think everyone was dead. Flashes of an argument and being pinned down for adjustments broke through now. But were they real, or were they just more images created by his own mind to make him think the tragedy that had struck Atlantis hadn't happened? The more he tried to fathom things out, the more confused he felt.

'We're wasting time,' Ronon rumbled. 'While you two are standing around talking, more information is going back to the Karthonians.'

'He's right. We need a quick solution. Would sedating him help?' Caldwell asked.

'I'd prefer it if you didn't do that,' Sheppard piped up, not that anyone was listening to him.

'Doubtful. The device works at a subconscious level. Even while Colonel Sheppard sleeps, the part of the brain they've tapped into remains active. We have to get the device off him.'

'What about an EM pulse?' Teyla suggested. 'I've heard you say before that it can have a destructive effect on technology.'

Rodney clicked his fingers rapidly, jabbing his index finger toward her. Sheppard couldn't help thinking that if this was an illusion, just a coping mechanism created by his bereaved mind, it was pretty realistic. He really had Rodney's mannerisms down pat.

'That could work,' McKay agreed.

'But will it affect any of the other systems on my ship?' Caldwell asked.

_Spoken like a true battle cruiser commander, _Sheppard thought. Could the Karthonians or even his own subconscious really create such believable facsimiles or should he dare to believe this was real? That was too much to hope for...wasn't it?

'Well, we'll have to find some way of focusing the energy directly into Sheppard, and we'll also have to calculate a pulse that will be safe for him, while being strong enough to knock out the implant's power supply.'

From the corner of his eye, Sheppard saw Ronon draw his gun and point it at him. In the split second before he fired, he had just enough time to think, _That's so Ronon._

*****

'Quit complaining, it worked didn't it.'

'But it might have killed him!'

'It didn't.'

'No, but there was no way you could have known it wouldn't. What if the power from your weapon had somehow managed to feedback through the implant and fried his brain?'

'You never said that could happen.'

'No, because you didn't give me time to finish thinking things through.'

'It still worked.'

'I give up. There's just no getting through to you!'

'Time out, kids,' Sheppard groaned, forcing his eyes open for the first time since their argument had woken him.

'Oh, thank God. You're conscious!' McKay breathed.

'Told you he'd be fine,' Ronon grunted, giving Sheppard a grin. 'How're you feelin', buddy?'

'Achy, thanks to you.' He reached up to his temple. There was a dressing there, but he couldn't feel any foreign objects beneath it.

'The implant is gone,' Teyla said softly, approaching the bed and steering his hand away from the injury. 'The device shut down and fell away after Ronon fired on you.'

'Well, never thought I'd be saying this, but thanks for shooting me, buddy,' Sheppard laughed.

Ronon grinned back at him, clearly proud to have solved the problem.

'Could we just make it clear that although it worked this time, you firing your gun is not the solution to everything,' Rodney pointed out. 'Oh, God. He's going to get even more trigger-happy than he already was.'

At that point, Elizabeth entered with Carson. Both looked overjoyed to see the colonel awake. Images of their dead bodies tried to force their way to the forefront, but this time, without the implant, Sheppard found it easier to push them down.

'Good to see yeh awake, Colonel. How're yeh feeling?' Carson asked, leaning in to check his pupil responses with his penlight.

Sheppard blinked away the bright blurs it burned onto his retinas. 'Pretty good. All the better for seeing you guys alive and well.'

'Did you have any reason to believe otherwise?' Elizabeth asked.

'The Kathonians were trying to convince me Atlantis had been lost in a Wraith attack and you were all dead. They even fooled me into thinking I came back here and found you.'

'That must have been very distressing,' Teyla soothed, squeezing his shoulder.

'Well, yeah. But I was never completely convinced. I knew their story didn't add up, and once I'd figured that out...things got a little nasty.'

'Aye, and that would explain the bruises,' Carson said with a sigh. 'I seem to spend most of my time patching yeh up, Colonel. What say yeh try to get through the next month with no injuries at all?'

'I'll do my best, but I can't promise anything.'

'I suppose that'll have to do,' Carson smiled. 'Five more minutes, then I want you to let him get some rest. All right?'

The others muttered their agreement as Carson left. 'Those Karthonians must've really wanted you to stay to go to all the trouble of infecting you with false memories,' Rodney smirked. 'See, sometimes it pays not to be popular.'

'I'll bear that in mind,' Sheppard replied, giving him a lop-sided smile. 'I think it's safe to say they never wanted to form an alliance with us against the Wraith, they just wanted to get the Ancient city on their planet up and running so they could protect themselves if they ever showed up.'

'So they wanted you to stick around to get the city activated and help them access Ancient technologies?' Elizabeth asked.

'That's the impression I got, but they weren't exactly the most forthcoming race we've encountered.'

'No kidding. That's quite some deception they pulled – trying to convince us you were dead, then trying to convince you that the same was true of us. Smacks of desperation,' Elizabeth mused.

'Not surprising really. With their level of technological advancement, the Wraith are bound to annihilate them if they discover their planet,' McKay pointed out.

'Perhaps we should go back and try to broker some kind of deal with them,' Sheppard suggested. 'After all, they may have information we would find useful, too.'

Elizabeth sucked in her cheeks, her gaze penetrating into his. 'After all they did, you're willing to give them that chance?'

'Sure. At least this time, we'll know what we're walking into.'

She smiled, nodding. 'Okay, I'll give it some thought. But for the time being, I think we'll just monitor the situation and give them some time to cool off. Agreed?'

'Agreed. I think they'll realise they need us on side as much as we need them. Even after what they did to me, I got the impression they kind of respected me for having the Ancient gene.'

'Oh, yeah, I can tell from the bruises,' she smirked. 'Anyway, Carson says you need rest, so we'll leave you to it. I'll see you in the morning.'

His friends sidled out, leaving him to catch up on some much needed sleep. He got the feeling he'd been struggling to surface from the Karthonians' lies for days, and now he felt completely drained. When he closed his eyes, the image of Elizabeth's dead body flashed into view, disturbing any chance he had of slipping quickly into restful sleep. He suspected he would have nightmares for the foreseeable future, but at least now he knew none of that was real. In time, the images would fade, as harsh memories always did.

For now, all he could do was cling to the hope that the lies the Karthonians had so cleverly woven into his brain never became a reality


End file.
